We had our new coffee machine wake us up with a fresh pot this morning. I’ve never been much of a coffee-drinker, but now I’m beginning to feel like I did when the family took its first foreign holiday (to Rimini, Italy) when I was fourteen or so and I discovered that I did like spaghetti. Up until then I had liked the look of spaghetti; that and the fact that it could be bought in the shape of whatever the toy fad was at any given time. I’d made my mum buy me dinosaur spaghetti, Transformers spaghetti, He-man spaghetti and a million other kinds, only to spit the first mouthful back onto my plate and demand that she make me something else. My problem had been the disgusting tinned pasta that Heinz and others thought somehow would ‘do’ and the lazy way they used the same tomato sauce they used for their baked beans. Then, in the restaurant of our Rimini hotel, when there really had been nothing else I could stomach the thought of on the menu, I had surrendered and asked for spaghetti bolognaise. The joy of al dente pasta and a sauce that someone, somewhere had given a shit about flooded my being. I was in love with pasta instantly, and my passion has never waned.
Now, having picked up a coffee-maker in the post-Christmas sales — reasonably priced and coming without the advertised instruction manual and measuring spoon — I’m discovering that freeze-dried, instant coffee isn’t really coffee at all. Mo tells me it’s not tolerated by anyone in the United States and I’m immediately ashamed that there are millions of the people who can simultaneously vote for George W. Bush and hold more sophisticated tastes than I.
This new coffee is a revelation. I’m already an addict, and proud of it.
So, this morning the timer on the machine had coffee ready for us at 9am. Mo poured it and brought her mug and mine back to bed. She also made the first run for refills, I made the second, and after our third cup I was so awake that I wondered why I’d waited over three decades to start the day with this jolt of awareness. It struck me that half the planet starts the day this way, so I’ve really had no excuse not to give it a try. Now, now I can see their point.
What other wonders await me? Do I really not like tuna? Can the eight tenths of the world’s population that smother everything in mayonaise all be wrong?
As these radical ideas bravely burn new pathways in my extra-alert brain, I realise that my cup is empty. Mo offers to refill it, but I claim the chore for my own. For one thing, I’m getting restless just sitting here. Honestly, how much of my life have I spent at rest? How could I have tolerated it? I’ve got to move around, dammit. There’s also the fact that the coffee machine is my new toy, and I want to play with it. If they made coffee-machine-shaped spaghetti, I’d probably go and buy some right now.
Cup refilled, I ingest the goodness. It’s been over a week since I last had a beer, but I’ve a new monkey on my back, and he’s very friendly. Next time I see you, I’ll introduce you. Name’s Joe.
